"It was a tough decision," Hart admits. "But it takes a lot of time if you really want to be dedicated. It got to the point where I just had to slow down."

Hart is not an isolated case. Volunteer fire companies throughout Lehigh County are holding members about as well as a punctured hose holds water.

Compounding the problem is that as the number of volunteers has declined, the number of fire calls has risen.

Volunteer fire spokesmen worry that the situation could cause major changes in how property owners are protected.

Figures supplied by Robert Reiss, Emmaus fire chief, show that between 1980 and 1990 the number of volunteer firefighters declined 32 percent while fire calls increased 101 percent, according to a survey in which 22 of 34 county units responded.

Why is manpower declining?

Like sparks racing through a night sky, verbal explanations fly in answer to that question. Hart's case epitomizes some of the answers.

Hart had a scheduling conflict between necessary training time and meetings of a lodge he enjoys. Hart's new job required long hours. Hart felt the effects of ever-increasing state and federal demands for specialized training.

Interviews with volunteer fire chiefs throughout the county turned up these reasons for the decline:

*Need for increased training time.

*New state and federal mandates.

*Concerns about liability.

*Economic and social conditions.

*Public apathy.

*Expectations by newcomers to the area that firefighting is in the hands of a paid force.

*Difficulty with volunteers getting time off from employment.

"We're doing more with fewer people, but doing more with fewer people means their burnout time is greater," Reiss says.

The need for increased training time was cited as a major reason that the number of volunteers is declining.

The days of unsophisticated "surround-and-drown" firefighting are gone. Today's "flame-suppressing technicians" need increased training to handle today's technology and the sometimes hazardous materials involved in contemporary fires and chemical spills.

"The biggest problem I see is that certain facets of training have become almost mandatory," says Mark Smith, chief of the Germansville Fire Company, Heidelberg Township. "I have the manpower, but it's hard to say, `Sorry, but we have to make this mandatory.'

"We have a smaller department, and we don't have (high) call volume, but we have to do the same job -- maybe not as often. ... But to get the guys out to do the training you need to do works against you."

Western Salisbury Fire Chief Jack Kelly agrees. "Recruiting volunteers has really become critical. ... The time requirements for qualification are 10 times what they used to be."

In addition to the more complicated nature of fighting fires today, training time is more extensive because of governmental mandates.

"There just isn't enough time. ... There's more and more burden being placed on the volunteer firefighter."

"One of the things that upsets us is when the federal or state government -- no problem at the local level -- puts legislation into effect that requires the fire service to do more, such as hazardous-materials training or annual physicals, but they don't put anything into revenue to pay for it," adds Macungie Fire Chief Tim Schantzenbach.

Even as an individual, Hart felt the long reach of Harrisburg.

"One of the problems is that the state is making so many mandates for qualification," he comments.

"This takes up so much time. I just lost interest."

The governmental requirements create another problem: If a department would fall short of them, it could open itself to liability claims.

"We see no objection to implementing these policies," Schantzenbach says. "We're not going to thumb our nose at them. It could create a liability problem. We'll implement them to the best of our ability. Then we can say at least we tried, rather than explain why we didn't do anything."

"If you made a mistake 10 to 15 years ago, it was gone," Kelly points out. "Now you end up in court."

Many potential volunteers just don't want to face that prospect. Others are simply victims of societal conditions.

"It's getting harder to make things meet in a home," Smith observes. "When a person is confronted with a choice of where's the next meal coming from or how to make the next mortgage payment, they choose to meet their family obligations first, and who can really blame them?"